Google AdSense Invalid Traffic/Clicks (IVT) Issues, Reasons & How to Get Rid of It

In digital marketing, invalid traffic is called IVT.

IVT is a common sight in programmatic advertising—especially in real-time bidding (RTB) processes where demand-side platforms (DSPs) have milliseconds to return an ad and a bid for that ad’s placement based on their algorithm.

It refers to any form of web traffic that isderived from an automated & non-human source. In some cases, this kind of traffic is used for some important reason—like search engine crawlers, advertiser bots & some government intelligent bots. Traffic from such crawlers may be registered as IVT (and, in most cases, GIVT {general invalid traffic}), but it isn’t a fraud.

Read it here

It should be noted that there is a tendency in some segments of the digital marketing
industry to use IVT interchangeably with fraud or to even call fraud “invalid traffic” despite the activity clearly being fraudulent or in some cases the real human traffic mark as invalid. There have some reasons that you can’t be found in Google AdSense Terms & Conditions but you have to be careful to prevent yourself from invalid activates/clicks. Here below, I mentioned some well-known and hidden issues that you have to be focused on and
careful of: –

• Source of traffic: Keep your traffic sources valid. If you buy traffic and ad clicks from any
  company or website, in most cases they will send non-human (auto bot) traffic. So, it
  may lead to invalid traffic issues, definitely AdSense will stop ad serving & permanently ban
  your account.
• Ad placement: Ads placement should be valid, if you place ads in an accidental position
  something like- in the menu position or right below the dropdown menus, it may lead
  to invalid clicks. Please check the example image below:

• Do not click own ads: this is highly restricted and prohibited for any ad networks as well
• as google AdSense, you can click your own website’s/channels ads and can’t do as
• many impressions, it will lead to invalid activities.
• Content policy: if you violate the content policy and forcefully want to bring high
  CPC/CPM ads, like- if you write articles or create videos with high CPC/CMP keywords
  and drive traffic only for getting clicks and generate high revenue with a little traffic it
  will lead to invalid clicks and activities as well.
• High CTR: If you place too many ads like- your page has a few contents and more ads,
  the click-through rate will be high, which will lead to invalid clicks surely. An ideal Content & ads
  ratio is 70:30 & CTR is below 2%.
• Old vs new publisher: AdSense is so much sensitive, if your account is new so you have
  to earn slowly, run fewer ads, take lower CTR and increase everything gradually. Its
  something like a bike or car, where you can’t place the top gear at once. Old websites
  and accounts can break so many rules.
• Ad frequency setup: Don’t place too many ads on your videos or websites. Many ads
  may increase CTR & high CTR may lead to invalid clicks.
• Website webmaster’s quality maintenance (Google recommended): If your website doesn’t
  maintain the google webmaster quality (Please read
  https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/guidelines/webmasterguidelines), you may get invalid clicks.
• Google Has Updated the Website & Content Strategies:
  https://developers.google.com/search/updates now publishers should have to keep updating
  content on their website or YouTube channels. If you didn’t and keep driving regular traffic so, the same
  traffic may come again and again on the same page/video, and click on ads 2 to 3 times within 24
  hours, it will be detected as invalid clicks.
• Google AdSense Policy Update: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/9336650?hl=en
  google come strict about the GDPR consent cookie policy. Personalized & non-personalized ads
  for EU traffic. Please read it here: https://www.cookiebot.com/en/cookie-consent/ . You should
  have integrated this to avoid invalid ad clicks.
• Use tools/plugins/custom bot to prevent invalid clicks: There have so many plugins (Advanced
  Ads) if you are using a WordPress website to prevent invalid clicks. Please read here:
  https://wpadvancedads.com/click-fraud/ . Also, can prevent using StatCounter:
  https://statcounter.com/support/detect-click-fraud/
• Almost those are the main reasons for invalid clicks/activities. There is no other reason for invalid
  attempting invalid clicks/activities.

NB: Here I tried to present some different invalid clicks/activities preventing methods that are rare in google. I tried to avoid listing the common issues & methods that easily can get by google search. After that, if you have any specific query, question, or talk, please let me know, and I’ll answer in regards. Thank you.